The Builders: Antiquity cover
2015BGG rank #3,150

The Builders: Antiquity

by Frédéric Henry · Bombyx

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Players2–4
Time30m
ComplexityLight
Age10+

About the game

What is The Builders: Antiquity?

From the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to the Pyramids of Egypt, and without forgetting the Greek Parthenon, The Builders: Antiquity — a standalone card game based on The Builders: Middle Ages — offers a whole range of challenges to its builders. To face these challenges, you must put on your foreman clothes. Between hiring workers, managing their organization, purchasing slaves or tools, and taking out loans, you'll have to make the right decisions to fulfill your dream: Becoming the greatest builder the age has ever known. In the game, players score points (and gain money) by completing the construction of buildings. Each building has four characteristics — carpentry, masonry, architecture, painting — rated between 0 and 5, and the workers have the same characteristics valued in the same range. To complete a construction, the player must add enough workers to cover the four characteristics of the building, but placing a worker on a construction site costs money. Each turn players have three free actions; however, for an added cost players may also chose to buy additional actions during their turn. Unlike in The Builders: Middle Ages, players can acquire slaves and put them to work, but if they don't pay to free the slaves by the end of the game, they lose points. Other changes from the original game include the ability to send your workers to universities or purchase tools to improve their characteristics. Make use of your workers, of your slaves, or your freed slaves to build your buildings and amass victory points to ultimately be named the greatest builder of all! —description from the publisher

How it plays

Mechanics

Action PointsContractsEnd Game BonusesIncomeLoansOpen DraftingSet Collection

On the shelf

Categories

AncientCard GameCity Building

Questions players ask

Questions to bring to BoardGameBrain

  • How do setup and the first turn work in The Builders: Antiquity?
  • When does scoring happen and what ends the game?
  • How should the table resolve an unusual timing or rules interaction?